


Kill Marks

by brickroad16



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, kill marks, lexa's pov, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5826169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brickroad16/pseuds/brickroad16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke wants kill marks, and Lexa’s the only person she trusts to know about them.</p>
<p>Lexa wants to help Clarke heal, and this is the only way she knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kill Marks

**Author's Note:**

> My first non-au fic! This story idea came out of a conversation with a friend. I'd love to discuss season three speculation with you over at nobledeeds-and-hotbaths on tumblr. :)

Polis is asleep but Lexa is awake when the knock comes. Sighing, she turns away from the window, crosses the room, and opens the door. Clarke stands there in a baggy tunic and loose sleeping trousers, and Lexa isn’t even surprised. How could she be? The journey Clarke is on now is the same one she took after Costia’s death.

“I want kill marks,” Clarke says, her voice low but harsh. Anger lingers in her eyes, anger that’s undoubtedly been there for months, and the sight of it cuts Lexa far more than a dagger to her throat ever could.

A thousand questions are on the tip of her tongue.

_Can’t you sleep?_

_How can I help?_

_Why me?_

But it’s Clarke, and even with their tenuous footing, they need no words. She nods once, stepping aside to let Clarke through the doorway. Clarke’s steps grow less certain the farther into the room she goes. She casts a glance around, takes in the sparse room. A wooden desk and chair in one corner. A bookcase in another. Fur-covered bed in the middle. A few candles scattered on the surfaces that Lexa hadn’t gotten around to extinguishing.

“Sit on the bed,” Lexa says. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Clarke nods, but she doesn’t sit.

Lexa leaves the room, closes the door behind her, and heads through the hallways to the infirmary. Though the guards along the way watch her with curious eyes, they make no move to stop her. The cool night air is pleasant against her skin, a stark contrast to the turmoil within her. She hates that Clarke wants the kill marks, but at the same time, she’s astonishingly grateful that _she_ is the only one Clarke trusts with this. It’s a beginning, one that, three months ago, she never thought she’d see.

Maybe that can be enough.

The infirmary is dark save for the moonlight streaming in through the window. She picks up a bag from a shelf. A small, round metal stylus, a bottle of liquor, and extra candles all go inside.

When she returns to her bedroom, Clarke sits cross-legged on the floor near the bookcase, a leather-bound volume in her hands. Lexa recognizes the worn red cover. A book of fairy tales. Costia used to tease her for liking such childish stories until Lexa caught her reading them one night. Clarke doesn’t look up, so Lexa doesn’t speak. Instead, she sets the liquor and the stylus on the bed. Then she drags the desk closer to the bed, places the candles, and lights them.

“Are you ready, Clarke?”

Clarke meets Lexa’s gaze. What passes between them in this moment is comprised of many things—fear, respect, despair, affection. Together, it’s something like hope.

Lexa reaches out a hand. _Trust me_ , she pleads silently.

Clarke’s hand is rough, but her grasp is firm. She lets Lexa pull her to her feet and then tosses the book on the bed. Lexa gestures to the bed and turns away to give Clarke privacy to remove her shirt.

Clarke catches her wrist. “It’s nothing you won’t see anyway.”

Lexa gulps. No, but when she imagined Clarke in her bedroom removing her shirt, she thought it would be under different circumstances. She chastises herself for thinking on lost possibilities.

Clarke removes her shirt and throws it on the furs beside the book. Her back is smooth save for her left shoulder, scarred by claw marks. Instinctively, Lexa reaches out and touches them. She yanks her hand away when Clarke shudders.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes.

“Don’t be,” Clarke says, lying down on her stomach. She picks up the bottle. “You don’t need the fire _and_ the alcohol, you know.”

A smile tugs at Lexa’s lips. She pours the liquor into a metal cup and holds it out to Clarke. “The alcohol’s for you.”

Clarke pushes it away.

“ _Beja, Klark_ ,” Lexa hums. This won’t be easy, and Clarke won’t back down, so Lexa is determined to do everything in her power to soften the pain. Perhaps begging is a low tactic, as she knows Clarke will do as she asks, just as Clarke knows Lexa will do as she asks.

Clarke frowns briefly before taking the cup and draining it.

“How many?” Lexa asks as she holds the stylus tip over a candle flame.

“934.”

Lexa loses her breath, blood draining from her face. She licks her lips and forces air back into her lungs. “I might not be able to fit them all.”

“Then we’ll use the rest of my body,” Clarke says harshly, though Lexa knows the harshness is directed at herself.

When the stylus is orange-hot, Lexa moves carefully to straddle Clarke’s thighs. “Is this okay?”

Clarke nods.

Lexa breathes in deeply through her nose. She doesn’t have any kill marks. Her back couldn’t hold marks for all the deaths she’s responsible for, either. Even so, she has scars enough to remind her. She doesn’t ask why Clarke needs this. She knows. It’s a way to put the burden to rest in a way she won’t forget, a way that allows her to carry it without giving it the power to destroy her.

Lexa squeezes Clarke’s shoulder. “ _Ste yuj, Klark_.”

She bites her lip as she presses the stylus into the skin of Clarke’s left shoulder, above the claw marks. Clarke hisses in a breath. A few more marks, and she’s clutching at the furs with shaky fingers.

Lexa swallows the question she wants to ask.

Clarke answers it anyway. “I burned the Mountain Men from the inside out. Hundreds of innocent people who died horribly because of me,” she says through clenched teeth. “I can handle this.”

Of course she can. She is strong. But even the strongest break. Even Lexa would break under nearly a thousand marks. She’s grateful she picked the smallest stylus.

The only thing that worries her is Clarke’s cries. She groans into the bedding with each touch of the hot stylus, but they will grow soon, after the first hundred or so, and this needs to be kept private. It’s why Clarke came to her, after all.

She completes the row she’s working on before crossing to the door and locking it. With any luck, her guards will think something else entirely is going on inside these walls. She reheats the stylus as she watches Clarke, who has her eyes closed and her temple pressed to the mattress.

Lexa’s heart broke long ago. Then a girl had fallen from the sky and looked at her with eyes the color of the ocean in sunlight and she had believed, however briefly, in happiness, in peace. To see what that girl has become—because of her, no less—breaks her messily stitched-up heart once again.

Settling back into place above Clarke, she wants nothing more than to soothe the fresh burns with tender kisses. Instead, she pours more liquor into the cup and urges, “Drink.”

Clarke nods shakily before downing it.

Lexa gently squeezes her shoulder, running her thumb over the scars of the claw marks, sending strength to Clarke the only way she knows how. Then she touches the stylus to flesh once more.

Whimpering, Clarke reaches back and fumbles for the hand on her shoulder. Lexa gives it to her freely, accepting the pain when Clarke’s fingers clamp down hard. Lexa would take on all the pain in the world if it meant Clarke never had to feel it again.

But Clarke must, and so she continues, their connection never broken.

* * *

Halfway through, sweat drips from Clarke’s forehead, and her breathing comes in ragged gasps. Lexa’s eyes are wet with unshed tears, but her fingers are steady. When she pauses at the end of a row to reheat the stylus, Clarke presses her face into the fur and lets out a muffled cry.

Holding the stylus over the flame, Lexa watches. The unsteady rise and fall of Clarke’s torso. The grip of her fingers into the furs. No stranger to this agony, Lexa knows what Clarke is feeling inside is much worse.

She nudges the book toward Clarke. “Do you want to read it to me?”

Clarke looks up, eyes bleary and red-rimmed. “What?” she asks hoarsely.

“After I was injured in my first battle,” Lexa says, “the healer, Galen, gave me that to read while he set my arm and bound my wounds.”

Clarke looks at the book as if for the first time. Lifting her head, she slides it in front of her and opens it.

Satisfied with the orange-hot tip of the stylus, Lexa settles back into place over Clarke. She brushes Clarke’s hair to the side of her neck, allowing her fingers to ghost over the unmarred skin there. Clarke reaches up again, and Lexa gives her hand willingly.

“Once upon a time . . .”

Lexa lowers the stylus.

* * *

Clarke passes out in the 700s. The new silence in the room makes Lexa bristle, but she takes comfort in the slow, quiet rasp of Clarke’s breathing. Lexa pauses, inhaling deeply. Clarke doesn’t need to tell her to keep going. Lexa doesn’t need to tell herself. Her hands move of their own accord, leaving her mind free to contemplate the girl in her bed, a girl who took on her people’s burdens until her back broke beneath them. Perhaps the comfort Lexa can offer is small comfort, but she knows what it means to lift your people up while your spine bends beneath them.

In a way, this will be better for Clarke. Dealing with the pain in the morning will be easier than right now.

And so Lexa continues. Flame, stylus, skin. The repetition, now that she no longer has Clarke’s cries in her ears, is almost calming, almost lets her forget why they’re here in the first place.

Finally, finally, she makes the 934th mark. It’s low on Clarke’s back, near to the dip at her spine. 25 marks in each row, nearly 40 columns down. Just the sight of all those burns makes Lexa’s heart clench. She can only hope that Clarke—that _they_ —will be better for it. She can only do everything in her power to keep this from destroying Clarke.

She sends the guard outside her door for a basin of water and clean linen. After closing the door again gently, she clears the bottle, cup, book, and stylus from the bed and sets them on the desk. Slowly, she walks around the room to extinguish all but three of the candles. By the time that’s done, the guard has returned with supplies. Lexa dips the linen in the water, cool against her fingers, and lays the cloth over Clarke’s back to ease the pain. A few moments later, before the cloth can get too cold, she drops it back in the basin and pats the skin dry.

Then she crawls back onto the bed to lie down beside Clarke. She ghosts her fingertips over Clarke’s cheek. Lexa will watch over her. After everything, a sleepless night is the least she can do. She will watch over Clarke—for the rest of their lives if Clarke should ask.

For now, though, they will rest. They will rest, and tomorrow will be gentler.

* * *

Sometime during the endless vigil, when the light behind the thin curtains is only beginning to turn from black to gray, Clarke shifts and murmurs, “ _Mochof, Leksa_.”

She moves closer, seeking body heat, and Lexa stretches out an arm. Clarke slips easily into the crook of Lexa’s neck. Lexa rests her hand on the curve of Clarke’s hip, careful not to touch any of the burns.

Clarke falls back asleep in an instant.

Lexa licks her lips. No more of this. She refuses to believe this feeling bubbling in her chest is weakness. It feels like waking up after years in an airless tomb. It feels like sunlight on her skin for the first time. It feels like safety.

She and Clarke were born for each other. Perhaps not in the way Lexa wishes, but in an important way nonetheless—as leaders. They were born to support each other, rising together rather than falling alone.

Lexa curls her free hand around Clarke’s. She will never betray that again.

* * *

The mere weeks that have passed between then and now feel like lifetimes.

Clarke lies on her stomach, arms pillowed beneath her head as she gazes unflinchingly at Lexa. On her side, Lexa traces the scars on Clarke’s back. Both are unclothed in the afterglow, sheets covering them to the waists, and the soft smile on Clarke’s lips is new and beautiful.

Lexa will give everything to see that smile every single day. That would have scared her once. Now, it only stokes the fire in her heart. She never thought vulnerability could make her feel so strong.

She places slow, gentle kisses along the first row of Clarke’s kill marks. They’re pink and puckered, but healing.

“They suit me,” Clarke says.

She hasn’t quite gotten rid of the self-loathing that weighs down her voice. The weight is much less than in recent weeks, though. That gives Lexa hope. This whole night gives Lexa hope.

“Monsters should be ugly,” Clarke says. “It’s how we know they’re monsters.”

That makes Lexa one, too. Because can’t only a monster love another monster?

Lexa presses a kiss to the claw marks on Clarke’s shoulder then rests her forehead on the top of Clarke’s spine. “You’re not a monster,” she whispers.

Maybe if she repeats it often enough— _not a monster, not a monster, not a monster_ —Clarke will finally start to believe. Clarke _wants_ to believe. Maybe that’s enough for now.

Clarke maneuvers onto her back. She cups Lexa’s cheek, thumb brushing over her cheekbone. Lexa dips her head into it, kisses her palm.

“How do you know?” Clarke asks, voice breaking. Doubt lingers there. She’s come so far since holding a knife to Lexa’s throat, since the night Lexa abandoned her to fight the Mountain alone, but healing is a longer process than the weeks they’ve had.

But when their gazes meet, everything else settles into place. They are damaged, they are scarred, they are broken. But together, they are whole.

“Because,” Lexa says, leaning down to brush her lips over Clarke’s. “Monsters are unlovable.”

She captures Clarke’s lips once more. The kiss is tender, the softness demanded by the harshness of their lives. Clarke is strong, but that’s exactly why she deserves gentleness.

Clarke threads her fingers into Lexa’s braids, pulls her closer, and deepens the kiss. And when she whispers, “ _Ai hod yu in seintaim_ ,” Lexa knows Clarke is healing.


End file.
